Keeping Things Orderly
by badly-knitted
Summary: Ianto is not obsessed with cleaning; he just knows the importance of being able to find what you need. Written for a prompt at fic promptly. Tiny spoiler for Cyberwoman.


**Title:** Keeping Things Orderly

 **Author:** badly-knitted

 **Characters:** Ianto, mentions the Team & Lisa.

 **Rating:** PG

 **Spoilers:** Tiny for Cyberwoman.

 **Summary:** Ianto is not obsessed with cleaning; he just knows the importance of being able to find what you need.

 **Word Count:** 629

 **Written For:** sincere's prompt 'Any, any, orderly,' at fic_promptly.

 **Disclaimer:** I don't own Torchwood, or the characters. They belong to the BBC.

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Ianto liked things orderly; that was a fact. Not, as some people seemed to think, because he had some kind of OCD, but because it made it easier to find what you needed when you needed it, and working for Torchwood, having whatever you might need close at hand was only common sense. You wouldn't want to be face to face with a rogue Weevil and not know where your Weevil spray was, or in the middle of repelling an alien invasion and find you'd run out of bullets. That kind of carelessness could lead to an even earlier death than was usual for Torchwood agents.

Besides, his title, or one of them anyway, was General Support Officer, which meant he was responsible for making sure the team always had fully stocked field kits, that their equipment was in good working order, and that the Hub was reasonably tidy, with nothing left where someone in a hurry might trip or slip on it and put themselves out of action just when they were needed most. The rest of the team didn't generally make things easy for him, which got annoying at times because juggling all his varied duties kept him busy enough as it was, but nagging them wasn't likely to change anything. He did, however, reserve the right to put his foot down any time someone expected him to do something they could perfectly well do for themselves, especially if they were just messing around with computer games, or shopping on ebay. He wasn't their nanny.

That said, if Owen needed an extra pair of hands to help clean up after a messy autopsy, Ianto would willingly muck in. Dust could be left, sometimes for weeks, as long as it didn't get to a point where it was starting to affect the Hub's systems or evolving into a previously unknown life form, but blood and guts were best dealt with in a timely fashion before they had a chance to stink the place up. The same went for anything that could become a health hazard, which meant Myfanwy's aerie and the inhabited cells had to be regularly cleaned as well.

Ianto took his duties seriously; they were all about ensuring that Torchwood could operate at peak efficiency, because with the kinds of threats the team often faced, every second counted. Delays could cost lives, whether of civilians, innocent aliens, or members of the team, something he didn't want on his conscience. Bad enough that he already had to live with the deaths he'd been at least partly responsible for through trying to save Lisa; he didn't want to add to that by overlooking something important. So he kept the Hub neat and orderly, throwing out the rubbish and making sure anything that could be recycled was, because there was more to saving the planet than just protecting it from alien invasion. He dusted and vacuumed the work areas when it looked like they needed it, getting rid of the worst of the mess in the name of maintaining efficiency, and considered that was good enough.

If anyone expected a massive concrete and metal underground bunker with an indoor pond to be spotless at all times, or ever, well, all Ianto could say was that they had seriously unrealistic expectations. The coffee machine, however, he always kept polished and gleaming. If was only right, because it was one of the most important items of equipment in the entire Hub, and it deserved to be treated as such. Without it, and him, supplying the team during the many crises they faced when nobody could be spared for a run to the nearest coffee shop, the whole organisation would grind to a halt from caffeine deprivation, and that would never do!

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The End


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